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Dinner, Shopping & a Movie: Red River

The Avalon Theatre

Shop or dine downtown anytime on Tuesday and bring us your receipt to see the 7:30 pm movie for free! One admission for every $5 spent. Admission is $7 without a receipt. Receipts must be same day and date as the movie. For more information or questions please call 970-263-5700

Rating: NR
Genre: Action & Adventure, Western
Runtime: 133 minutes

Director Howard Hawks' second western was also his first collaboration with John Wayne. Officially based on Borden Chase's novel The Chisholm Trail, the film also owes a great deal to Mutiny on the Bounty, both structurally and in the adversarial relationship between the two leading characters. Wayne stars as headstrong frontiersman Tom Dunson, who is taking his leave of a westbound wagon train to seek his fortune in Texas. This impulsive act loses him the love of his fiancée Fen (Colleen Gray) but gains him a lifelong friend in the person of (occasionally) toothless old camp cook Groot Nadine (Walter Brennan). Not long afterward, Dunson discovers that Fen was killed in an Indian raid, a fact that leaves him an emotionless cipher. The only survivor of the tragedy is a young orphan named Matthew Garth (Mickey Kuhn), whom Dunson unofficially adopts as his son. As the years pass, the tactiturn Dunson becomes the most powerful and feared cattle baron in the territory, but the grown-up Garth (now played by Montgomery Clift, in his first film appearance) eventually rebels against Dunson's stubbornness and autocratic behavior, striking out on his own as his surrogate father growls: "Some day you'll turn around and I'll be there; I'm gonna kill ya, Matt." As time passes, Garth, leading his own cattle drive, becomes Dunson's most formidable rival. The huge cast includes John Ireland in perhaps his best role as the enigmatic gunman Cherry Valance; both Harry Carey, Sr. and Harry Carey, Jr.; and an uncredited Shelley Winters as a dance hall girl.

Shop or dine downtown anytime on Tuesday and bring us your receipt to see the 7:30 pm movie for free! One admission for every $5 spent. Admission is $7 without a receipt. Receipts must be same day and date as the movie. For more information or questions please call 970-263-5700

Rating: NR
Genre: Action & Adventure, Western
Runtime: 133 minutes

Director Howard Hawks' second western was also his first collaboration with John Wayne. Officially based on Borden Chase's novel The Chisholm Trail, the film also owes a great deal to Mutiny on the Bounty, both structurally and in the adversarial relationship between the two leading characters. Wayne stars as headstrong frontiersman Tom Dunson, who is taking his leave of a westbound wagon train to seek his fortune in Texas. This impulsive act loses him the love of his fiancée Fen (Colleen Gray) but gains him a lifelong friend in the person of (occasionally) toothless old camp cook Groot Nadine (Walter Brennan). Not long afterward, Dunson discovers that Fen was killed in an Indian raid, a fact that leaves him an emotionless cipher. The only survivor of the tragedy is a young orphan named Matthew Garth (Mickey Kuhn), whom Dunson unofficially adopts as his son. As the years pass, the tactiturn Dunson becomes the most powerful and feared cattle baron in the territory, but the grown-up Garth (now played by Montgomery Clift, in his first film appearance) eventually rebels against Dunson's stubbornness and autocratic behavior, striking out on his own as his surrogate father growls: "Some day you'll turn around and I'll be there; I'm gonna kill ya, Matt." As time passes, Garth, leading his own cattle drive, becomes Dunson's most formidable rival. The huge cast includes John Ireland in perhaps his best role as the enigmatic gunman Cherry Valance; both Harry Carey, Sr. and Harry Carey, Jr.; and an uncredited Shelley Winters as a dance hall girl.

Built for the residents of Grand Junction by local publishing giant Walter Walker in 1923, the Avalon Theatre was and still is one of Western Colorado's largest performing arts halls.

The Avalon Theatre also features a foreign and independent film series; dance, theatrical, lecture and variety shows; and private functions. The façade and lobby areas already having been restored to their original splendor. We invite you to come by and see the restoration and enjoy some of the talent and entertainment Grand Junction has to offer.